The Clockwork Dancer
by ThroughtheEyeofaNeedle
Summary: 1850, Nijni-Novgorod, Russia. In the end, it doesn't take long for a world to be turned upside down. Erik/OC. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N **I've taken down the first chapter from SunWillRise - it's now up here. Influences from Lainie Taylor's 'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' and 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower.'

* * *

**Part I**

**Nijni-Novgorod 1850**

She appeared outside his tent one morning, a girl of no more than twelve years old, sitting cross legged on the ground, tear tracks down her dirty face and a pair of filthy dancing slippers clutched to her scrawny chest. In fact, he almost tripped over her as he pushed aside the black cloth door, swearing roundly as she scrambled backwards on all fours like a frightened insect.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Zítra Flor," she said, looking up at him with dark blue eyes framed by long thick lashes.

He stared at her for a second. "Go," he snapped. "Go on. Leave. I don't have time for street-children."

An offended look crossed her little face, and she folded her arms petulantly. "I am not a street-child," she said crossly.

Intrigued despite himself at the audacity of this little bag of bones and skin, he asked, "Then what are you?"

She thought for a second, biting her lip. He watched as a drop of crimson blood welled from the cut skin. "I'm a dancer," she said eventually.

"I don't have time for dancers, either, girl," he told her harshly. "Be off with you."

As he swept past, she grabbed the hem of his cloak, and he resisted the urge to pull out his Punjab lasso and end this little nuisance. "I'm not a normal dancer just like you're not a normal magician," she tightened her fist on the material, and he heard it rip a little. "You're a masked magician, and I'm a clockwork dancer."

His visible lip curled. "Don't bother me again," he growled, pulling his cloak free with a rip of the expensive black material.

* * *

When he returned from his errand, the girl was still sitting there in the entrance to his tent, singing in an off-tune voice that was scratchy with disuse. "I thought I told you to leave," he said menacingly, picking her up by the front of her sackcloth dress so that her legs dangled off the ground.

"I'm not leaving till you hire me," she tossed back her little head, utterly unafraid.

"Why does a twelve-year-old street rat need a job?" he shook her, but she just regarded him with those wide blue eyes.

"I am twelve and a half, not twelve," she told him. "And I am not a street-rat, I am a clockwork dancer. Will you hire me?"

"If only to get rid of you," he muttered, annoyed at her persistence. "Go and buy some bread, then." He handed her two silver coins and she darted off into the ground, her dancing slippers hanging around her neck.

She returned ten minutes later, pushing aside the black cloth tent opening and venturing inside, the bread clutched under one arm. He was sitting on red floor cushions, and the carpet was squishy under her bare, grimy feet.

"I brought you your bread, _Pan,_" she said cheerfully, tossing it to land at his feet.

"Russian is not your first language," he observed as she settled herself down, cross-legged, again, on the floor.

"I am Czech," she told him proudly, and for a moment he fought back laughter at the expression on her face.

"And why are you here?" he asked. Czech was not one of the many languages he had learnt.

"I saw you in Prague, with the tin soldier," she said, reaching out to tear off a corner of the bread and stuff it greedily into her mouth. "Then when the Enchanter said that he didn't want me anymore, I came here, to the fair in Russia with a clockmaker and his son. The old man died and the young one didn't want me anymore, because I wasn't pretty enough to marry. He also didn't want a girl who turned to wood every birthday."

She pushed more bread into her mouth so that her cheeks were bulging. "Then I thought of who would want me, and I thought of the masked magician. I thought he would have use for a clockwork dancer."

"You are interesting," he told the girl, privately thinking that the child must be mad, and she beamed, showing off several missing teeth. "You may sleep here tonight, but tomorrow you must be on your way. Find someone else who will want you."

She lay down on the floor contentedly, and he sat back against the cushions, watching her eyes flutter shut. He stood, and pushed back the curtains. Tonight he would have to perform in the open air.

* * *

She was gone in the morning when he returned from an errand. Disappeared, vanished into thin air. Good riddance.

But his pleasure was short-lived. By evening, she had returned, this time with the dancing slippers on her feet, and a chipped wooden bowl which she set outside his tent. He watched from behind the curtains as she stretched her legs and her fingers, smoothing out the skirt of that shapeless dress.

And then the crowd was pushing into his tent, and she was obscured from his vision, distracted by the faces hungry for a glimpse of his magic. And then at the end, when they were pressing in on him, demanding, "Take off your mask, magician! Sing for us!" he didn't notice the small figure slipping through the crowd until he began to sing, and then she was there, moving so gracefully from angle to angle, and the crowd was weeping.

The Persian, who came the night before when the child was asleep in his tent, stayed behind. The girl settled herself down onto the carpet like she owned the place, her blue eyes flicking from one man to the other.

"You have come for your answer, I suppose," the magician turned away from the tent opening, lifting his mask back to his face.

"You will be greatly honoured in Persia," the dark-skinned man replied carefully. "Anything you desire will be yours."

The magician glared at the older man, and the girl sat back against the cushions, bored. "No-one in this world can give me what I desire," he snapped. "Not even the Shah of Persia."

The Persian looked terrified for an instant. "But…you will come with me?"

The magician shrugged, elegant and scornful. "Apparently."

"Will I come too, _Pan_?" the girl piped up eagerly, fiddling with something hanging from her neck.

The magician regarded the girl for a few seconds, weighing up the options. If he said no, she'd be likely to follow them. And in any case, she wasn't lying, she was a good dancer and could extend the range of displays he would be able to perform. Dredging up the girl's name from his memory, he said, "If you wish, Zítra."

* * *

The boat was horribly crowded, people pressed against people until he could take it no longer. In the middle of the night, he calmly woke Zítra and began to unload his horses and possessions, ignoring the shivering girl standing on the riverbank, wrapped in an old cloak of his that she'd taken.

"Where are we going, _Pan_?" she asked sleepily, pushing her grimy hair out of her face.

He didn't reply, concentrating on getting his high-spirited stallion to get off the boat. That was when the dark-skinned Persian appeared at the top of the boarding plank, an alarmed expression crossing his face.

She hugged the cloak more tightly around her skinny body as the two men began to argue, holding the dull gold key around her neck tightly for luck. The magician did not believe her when she told him she was clockwork, but he'd see. Her birthday was only three months off, and then he'd see when he woke up and found that his clockwork dancer had indeed reverted to wood and gears.

He'd be sorry he'd ever doubted her then.

* * *

They rode for a long time. Days and days, and weeks and weeks, only stopping when the Persian became ill. The magician was angry at the delay, sitting and fuming in his tent, and even Zítra did not dare to approach him, instead sitting outside and stretching her skinny legs above her head, and fiddling with her key.

One the day before they were due to start up again, a man she had seen with the Persian approached her, his dark eyes friendly. "Hello, little one," he said in stumbling Russian.

"Hello," she replied politely, wiping some of the grime off her face with the back of her equally dirty hand.

"I am surprised that the magician does not clean his dancer and clothe her more appropriately," he sat next to her, his long robes swishing in the dust.

"The magician does not like me," she told him matter-of-factly. "He does not like anyone, I do not think."

"My master, Nadir Khan, will provide clothes to you when we reach Persia," the man smiled. "He is a kind and generous man. I am proud to serve him."

She did not reply, instead took to drawing shapes in the dust with the tips of her fingers, swirling shapes that resolved themselves into the friends she left behind. The tin soldier who'd always blushed when he'd seen her. The beautiful china dolls who'd had tea every day and put her hair up in rags so that she would have ringlets like they did and the rag dolls who giggled behind their hands whenever they saw a handsome boy.

But until the Enchanter put her out, all they would be were little girls and boys who came from china and fabric and tin, and would return to it when they were finished, good enough only to sit on shelves and smile painted smiles.

She was special, she was always told. She could always be re-woken using her key, she wouldn't have a limited lifetime. When she found love, she would stay as a girl, a human girl for the rest of her days, and not change back to a clockwork figurine on the thirtieth of March every year.

She counted herself blessed to be the only one the Enchanter deemed worthy enough to have this privilege. She counted herself lucky to have been thrown out before he grew bored of her, and took away her key, sold her to the nearest toy-shop to be played with by rough-handed children until she broke, then discarded on a scrap heap.

Yes, she was very lucky indeed.

* * *

They entered the harbour city of Astrakhan in the golden sunshine of the late afternoon, pushing through brightly dressed market-goers to reach the docks. A small ship, bobbing on the blue-green waves that broke against the sea wall, waited for them, flying a beautifully dyed flag from the main mast.

The Persian ushered the magician and the girl aboard, up the creaking gangplank and onto the deck, an expression of relief on his careworn face. The magician had taken to disappearing on their overland journey from Kazan, but water could hold him like threats and bribes could not.

The wooden planks swayed alarmingly under their feet as the sailors stood to attention in front of them across the deck. The magician's eyes raked across their burnt faces, settling on the gold thread adorning the jacket of the captain, glinting as it caught the light.

"We are honoured to welcome you aboard, sir," the captain's Russian was strongly accented and shaky; he looked relieved when the magician replied in Persian, the guttural sounds rolling off his tongue with ease.

"Where is my cabin?"

The girl beside him crossed her arms, a frown creasing her dirty forehead. "What are you saying?" she demanded. The magician waved her aside with a command to be quiet.

The captain opened a door to the stern of the boat, revealing a rich room that seemed faded, the velvet hangings patchy and moth-eaten. A boy with gaps in his teeth and limbs that looked too big for him was hurriedly draping a sheet from the ceiling, obscuring a small truckle in the corner, covered by a tattered blanket.

"For the girl," the captain said, and Zítra scowled, understanding the gesture of his callused hand towards her and the sorry-looking little bed.

The magician inclined his head, and the captain's mouth twitched in what could be a smile. "We'll set sail in the next half hour."

* * *

The last stage of the journey was mercifully easy. The sea was calm and the wind behind the little ship as they crossed the blue of the Caspian Sea.

The girl stood in the prow as they approached land, clouds scudding across the golden sky as they made anchor in what the Persia called Ashraf with a fond smile on his face.

The men went ahead, the Persian dressed in colourful robes and the magician in his usual black, the girl trailing behind them, her dirty dress blending in with the sandy ground. Finally, they reached a beautiful house, set back amongst cypress trees, stained glass sending shards of light across the earth.

A boy stood unsteadily on the front steps leading up to the raised veranda surrounding the house, his dark eyes shining with excitement. "Father!" he called. "Father! You've been away for so long, and I thought you weren't ever going to come back!"

He flung himself down the steps, wrapping thin arms tenaciously around the Persian's neck. The girl watched from a distance, her blue eyes narrowed slightly against the glare of the setting sun. It was curious, watching real people with a father and a mother. Of course, she has never known that unconditional love of a parent and child, only the careless love of a craftsman for his masterpiece.

"Reza, my boy," the Persian said softly. "Come now, we have guests."

The boy's eyes strayed towards her for a second, then looked up wide-eyed at the ominous figure of the magician. "Are you really the greatest magician in the world?" he burst out breathlessly.

"Some have called me that." Zítra felt a twinge of jealousy as she watched the boy take the magician's sleeve, his father's hand steady under his elbow as he led the two men indoors on wobbling legs like a new-born fawn.

"Miss," a servant stepped out of the shadows of the house, dark hairs escaping from her veil. "Would you like to come with me, Miss? I'll draw you a bath and get some clothes for you."

The girl narrowed her eyes in confusion. "I do not speak Persian."

The servant woman spread her hands apologetically, then beckoned for the girl to come into the house.

Zítra thoughtfully regarded the open door behind the servant for a moment, before taking the stairs with an easy grace, and following the woman inside.

* * *

Later that evening, dressed in yellow crêpe that fluttered around her ankles, her hair, which now clean was a kind of strawberry chestnut waving gently around her thin, angular face, she entered the veranda where the magician and the Persian were conversing in low tones.

Suddenly, the magician stood. "If you would excuse me from supper tonight, I have work to attend to."

He turned, and stopped for a second as he saw the girl, his amber eyes narrowed. "You look better," he told her.

"Maybe because I'm clean," she shot back, folding her arms defiantly as she stared him down.

He snorted, and brushed past her, the black and yellow of their clothes looking for an instant like a wasp, swift and stinging.

The Persian turned to look at her, a sadness lingering in his eyes. "Come, girl, sit," he said, gesturing to the wicker chair that the magician had vacated. She gathered up her skirts, and sat down, keeping her back straight like a lady. The china dolls would have been proud.

"I have not had an opportunity to speak to you on the journey," he said, smile lines crinkling at the corners of his mouth. "You are Zítra, correct?

"Zítra Flor, yes," without thinking, she reached up to fiddle with the key hanging around her neck.

"Welcome to Persia, Zítra Flor."

The air was filled with the sounds of cicadas, humming in the trees as the stars began to shine in a midnight blue sky. "He says that my son is dying," the Persian says abruptly.

"I'm sorry," the girl replied, but the older man's eyes were in the past, reliving memories of happier times spent in the light of a golden sun.

"Reza is the only family I have, my only son. My little boy," the Persian began to weep softly, and Zítra took his hand, running her thumb in circles over the dark skin in an attempt to soothe him.

After a while, the tears dried up, leaving only traces on his cheeks. "Come, supper will be waiting," the Persian rose slowly, dragging the back of his hand across his eyes.

She watched as he walked to the doorway, his figure silhouetted in the light of the lamps inside, tall and straight even with the weight of his grief bearing down upon him.

They stayed around the dinner table, reclining on cushions for a long time, Zítra telling stories about Prague, about her friends and her odyssey across Europe, and the Persian recounting facts of life in the Persian court.

It was late and she was lying in her bed with the moon shining through the window when she realised which day it was.

She tossed and turned all night long, dreading what the daybreak would bring.

* * *

"Master, _Master_!" the housekeeper stumbled into the main room in a swirl of voluminous black veil and jangling bracelets.

"What is it?" the Persian turned away from the window, irritated.

"The girl, the dancer," the woman waved her hands in the air, making the sign against evil over and over again. "She's wooden and stiff, and I cannot wake her no matter how hard I try! She must be dead, but I have not seen a dead body like hers, no not ever…"

"Hush," the Persian clapped his hands together. "Fetch the magician. Tell him what has happened."

"I heard." the magician appeared in one of the doorways, a white shirt buttoned loosely over black trousers and a cravat hanging carelessly around his neck.

"Let's go, then." the Persian said shortly.

The two men followed the hysterical woman down the many hallways, stopping outside a door standing ajar. The magician pushed past the other two, crossing to the bed hung with crimson drapes.

"Zítra Flor," he said harshly, shaking the prone body clad in a loose white nightdress lying amongst tangled covers.

There was a clunking sound, and the sound of birds taking flight outside the window. The magician swore foully under his breath. "So she was telling the truth, then. Idiot child." He looked up at the two figures standing frozen in the doorway. "Come, Daroga. There is nothing to harm you here."

The Persian approached the bed cautiously, drawing back shocked when the magician lifted a wooden doll into his arms. "Ingenious, really," he murmured, absorbed in looking at the elbow joint. "I should like to meet this Enchanter she talked about."

"What has happened?" he asked fearfully, drawing the sign against evil into the air with his fingertip.

"She is a clockwork doll," the magician pushed back a strand of limp, fake, chestnut hair, touching elegant white fingers to the painted cheek. "She has told me several times before now, but I did not believe her."

"How…how…" a sheen of sweat covered the Persian's forehead as he stared at the magician.

"I do not know how she is both a living breathing girl and a wooden doll. It is a mystery I would like to discover."

"Can you…can you bring her back to life?" the woman was trembling in the doorway, her hands pressed over her heart.

"Easily," the magician said contemptuously. He laid the doll back on the bed, taking a torn velvet ribbon from around its neck. The Persian watched in astonishment as a key dangled from the magician's fingers, glittering in shafts of sunlight streaming through the window.

He ripped the back of the nightgown to reveal a keyhole set into the doll's back, a black shape against the painted ivory of her skin, lined with gold. He inserted the key and twisted several times.

The doll's legs and arms began to jerk, and before their eyes wood became flesh, and Zítra Flor was sitting on the edge of the bed, coughing weakly into her hand and glaring at all of them. "I told you so," she said. "I told you so."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N **Thank you to my three followers and one favourite. I hope to hear from you, maybe. Also, a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Warning for slight mature content later on.

* * *

**Part II**

**Tehran, 1851**

The Persian Court was more spectacular than Zítra had ever imagined it would be. Jewels inlaid into the walls, the floor, ribbons of gold threaded through the stone, and incense hanging in the air like a stifling cloud.

"Where has he gone now? His audience is in less than half of an hour." the Persian muttered irritably, fear in his green eyes and the way he wrung his hands.

"That way," Zítra sees a swirl of black out of the corner of her eye, easy to spot amongst the colours.

"Damn him, damn him," the two hurried after the shadow, reaching a door inlaid with precious metal. The Persian pushed it open, and swore loudly. "Get down from there now!"

The magician was perched on top of a jewelled throne like a great black raven, turning a diamond calmly over in his hands. "Such a beautiful place, don't you agree, Daroga?"

They watched with a mixture of horror and awe as he pulled what looked like another diamond out from under his cloak, fitting it neatly into the gaping space left behind by the real thing. "Would you care for a diamond?"

"Come down from there, _please_," the Persian has a hand against the wall, breathing heavily and eyes darting. "If you are discovered, all three of us will be put to death."

"Oh Daroga, what a truly boring little fart you are at times," the magician slowly descended the steps, and Zítra stifled a giggle behind her small hand. The magician's eyes darted to her, and with look that was almost approval he swept out of the open door. "We're late."

* * *

The Shah of Persia was seated in amongst roses, his bejewelled hand caressing the fur of a sleek Siamese bearing a diamond-encrusted collar. At sight of the magician, it jumped up, winding around his legs and purring after giving a quick, scornful glances towards the Persian and the girl clad in turquoise. Other cats materialised from the rose-bushes and joined the first, mewing and fighting for attention.

The Shah narrowed his eyes. "Fascinating. I have never observed them to do that…never. Daroga!"

The Persian bowed and left. The Shah's eyes turned to the pale-skinned girl who had taken a step closer to the magician. "Who is this?" he demanded.

"My assistant," the magician replied smoothly, and Zítra felt herself stand a little taller. Since the incident on her birthday, he had been teaching her various tricks and ways she could help set up some of his performances.

"How old are you, girl?" his eyes travelled up and down her body, and she resisted the urge to hide behind the magician's cloak.

"Thirteen, sir," she bunched her fists into the material of her dress.

"You may walk behind us," the Shah rose to his feet. "Come, my friend. We have much to discuss."

* * *

The next day, the magician was summoned to the harem. Two black eunuchs escorted him along long, winding corridors, and Zítra trailed behind in a cloud of jasmine and green silk, given by the Shah.

They were kept waiting in a small, cage-like courtyard for over an hour. The magician paced up and down with slow, deliberate steps, and Zítra began to dance, balancing on the tips of her slender feet, the silk trousers billowing as she spun and twirled.

As the set of the magician's shoulders began to get tenser, the curl of his lower lip more furious, the eunuchs closed in with their weapons raised high. He glared at them, and sparks of blue, green and gold erupted from his fingertips, leaping up in a circle of flames around them.

There was slow, mocking applause from the balcony, and Zítra ducked behind the magician, hiding from a pair of snake-like dark eyes gleaming out of a handsome face that struck fear into her heart. "I trust that you have not journeyed all the way from Russia to show me fireworks," she drawled, trailing a hennaed hand across the marble of the balcony rail.

"By no means, madam." The magician stares her down, and Zítra peeks out from behind his cloak. "That was a mere trifle designed to amuse tiresome children."

"Then if that was a mere trifle, I ask you to remove your mask. Now."

Frightened at the enjoyment in the woman's eyes, Zítra clapped her hands over her ears, squeezed her eyes shut. If the magician exploded, shouted and raged, then it would be the death of both of them. She'd not been at the court long, but she understood that.

There is the noise of leather hitting stone, and the screams of terrified women. "The next woman who screams shall be beaten to death for her stupidity," the khanum snapped, vicious and relentless. "Go now, all of you."

Her eyes narrowed as she saw a flash of green silk, and chestnut hair. "Who is that behind you?"

His hand came back, almost touching Zítra's arm. "My assistant."

"I was not aware that you needed an…assistant," the khanum leant forward, and the magician stepped aside, revealing Zítra to the woman's malevolent gaze.

"I do not. She is a dancer, and has been with me for the past months," the magician says lazily. "I have grown fond of her."

"Fond…" the khanum laughed. "Well, little girl, you shall be allowed to remain with your master." She turns her gaze back to the unmasked face of the magician. "And if your imagination matches your face, you shall be the second most powerful man in Persia."

The magician was seen to consider it for a second. "Is that a prophecy, or a promise?"

"That, my friend, is entirely for you to decide."

* * *

The second that they were alone in their apartment, she turned to him, her hands on her hips. "I don't like the khanum," she stated matter-of-factly.

"Keep it to yourself, then would you?" he grunts, sinking down on the divan. "Go on. Amuse yourself."

She turns to go, a question nagging at the tip of her tongue. "Did you mean it?"

"What?" he doesn't move.

"That you are fond of me?" she lingers in the doorway, and he groans, twisting to look at her with startlingly amber eyes.

"You will find I am not very fond of you after all if you keep asking inane questions, girl," he said severely.

She raised herself on the tips of her toes, her arms spread behind her as though she was about to take flight. "Alright," she said. "Alright."

* * *

A year passed in a shower of magic-tricks and performances that got darker and darker as the months went on. The khanum plied her favourite entertainer with hashish, a drug that distorted his already blackened imagination, horrors spilling from his head in rows of mangled corpses and mirrored rooms.

The Persian, growing sick of this chaos and bloodshed, introduced the magician to opium, which stopped the terrible deeds being committed to appease the khanum's lust for torture.

It was just after Zítra's birthday again when the magician entered the apartment in a rage, throwing things against the painted walls in showers of broken china and glass. "A quaint little Persian custom indeed," he shouted. "Has no-one in this godforsaken country heard of a decent period of mourning?"

She stood in the doorway and watched as he raged, perplexed that a man who had so few morals could be so passionate about something that barely mattered to people in this country. A little widowed princess, forced to marry again less than a week after her previous husband's death. No Persians would care about her. It must have been one of his French eccentricities to care so deeply about propriety.

"You will have to perform," the Persian said as he shut the door behind the magician's anger.

"Will you need help?" Zítra asked eagerly as the magician sank onto the divan, the visible part of his face white and set.

"No," he said shortly.

Disappointment tugged at her, and she turned away, the key twirling between her fingers. "Zítra," the Persian crossed the room and laid a hand on her shoulder. "The Shah has asked for you to dance as well," he told her.

"She will not," the magician spoke up harshly.

"Why?" Zítra rounded on the magician. "Why won't you let me perform? I've not been allowed to dance in public ever since we came here! It's not fair!"

"Stop acting like a child," the magician rose to his feet, a menacing black shadow looming over her. "Go to your room."

Her lower lip stuck out in a pout, and she tossed her hair. "I'm not a child."

"If you act like one, I shall punish you like one. Go. Now."

Admitting defeat, Zítra swung around in a whirl of silk skirt and disappeared, slamming the door to her bedroom behind her. The Persian turned wearily to face the magician.

"Erik, you're being wholly unreasonable. Let her dance."

"I've seen the way the Shah looks at her," the magician leans his head against the wall, his feet crunching on shards of broken objects. "I will not have her hurt."

"And if you defy the Shah, both of your heads will end up stuck over the palace gates," the Persian sighs. "You care for her more than it is safe to do so, my friend."

The magician glares at him, and the Persian's forced smile falters under the weight of the younger man's fury. "She is a child, Daroga. Only just fourteen. Too young to be the object of lust for any man."

"_You_ desire her," the accusation is blunt and greeted with stifling silence for endless ticks of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.

"I know her," the magician says slowly. "I know that she is stubborn and stupid and kind and good and irritating, and if I desired her, I wouldn't ever act on it. Do you believe me?"

"Yes," the Persian says without hesitating. "I do."

"I suppose I must let her dance, mustn't I?" the magician sighed, raking a hand through his hair and adjusting his mask.

"You cannot deny a songbird of it song any more than you can deny a dancer of movement," the Persian opens the front door with these parting words of wisdom.

"Goodnight," the magician said slowly as the front door shuts behind the bright silk of the Persian's robes.

* * *

He told Zítra through the door of his change of mind, but received no reply. Exasperated, he turned away, moving into the room he'd deemed his workshop to attend to his own performance, draping a coffin in black velvet and carefully arranging the illusion he would create on the night of the wedding.

The girl had not re-appeared by that evening, though there was a loaf of bread missing from the larder and a roll of bandages from the cabinet that contained his opium.

For the next three days, she stayed locked in her room. He heard thumps and the sound of her muttering in Czech, but was too preoccupied with his own affairs to pay any attention to her. If she wanted to be reclusive, he'd let her.

On the eve of the wedding, an hour before the feast was about to begin, she finally emerged, clad in the most incredible costume he had ever seen. A tattered, dirty white tutu and torn lace corset hanging by one strap off her slender shoulder. Her old dancing shoes on her feet, the ribbons trailing sorrowfully on the floor.

"Will you help me?" she asked, the first time he'd ever seen her shy.

He nodded tersely, taking the proffered flower crown of faded rosebuds and the face-paint box. She sat down on the divan, tucking her slim legs under her and shaking her tumble of half curls loose. "It needs to be up," she said nervously. "Messy. And the crown on top of it. Then the make-up has to be white, and little red lips and large dark eyes. I can't do it myself, I've never been very good at make-up. I'm a toy dancer, you see."

"Hush," he muttered, kneeling behind her, and carefully untangling the knots in her hair with his fingers. "Stay still."

He was surprising gentle, for a man who had delivered so many death blows with the frightening piece of catgut he called the Punjab lasso. Skilled as well, for in no time, her hair was piled on top of her head, the crown of rosebuds holding it in place and little loose ringlets teased forward to frame her face.

"Turn around." He opened the make-up case, and she shifted, her hands clenched tightly at her sides as he began to paint her face, his eyes narrowed in concentration. When her cheeks were done, she closed her eyes and he picked up a kohl stick, outlined the almond shape of them, his face so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath, the gentle, trembling touch of the make-up stick on her eyelids.

"Done," he said, forcibly pulling himself away and replacing the final make-up item, the red lipstick, in the box. He stood, his jet-beaded cloak swirling around him, and then she was staring up at him, and she opened her mouth to say something, but he turned away, picking up the velvet bag in which his illusion was held.

He opened the door to leave, and the cold air spilling in from outside did much to relieve her heady smell of jasmine and soap that filled his head with intoxicating thoughts of her freckled cheeks and fluttering eyelids. He was grown man, not a lovesick boy, and with a face like his, he could never hope to desire a woman and be desired in return.

And she is not a woman, she is a little girl, he reminded himself as she tripped down the hallway after him, swathed in a velvet cloak. A young girl who is innocent and kind and trusting and not to be taken advantage of.

* * *

The court was in uproar after the trick with the skeleton, the bony finger pointing accusingly at the new Grand Vizier, the father-in-law of the little princess. The magician turned imperiously, and strode to the edge of the hall, curious as to what Zítra was going to do. Accepting as glass of wine, he leant against the wall, his hat tilted low to shield his mask from prying eyes of distinguished guests and the glares of the Grand Vizier's associates.

She appeared to applause in the great doorway, stumbling several steps into the great hall and collapsing to the floor, her legs and arms spread at funny angles, a vision in white against the black marble.

Then the music started and he could only stare as she rose on unsteady legs, crumpling again and again into an heap of painted limbs and tulle skirts, a little toy dancer struggling to regain her balance. As the notes from the harp and piano and violin grew, she became more graceful, her body losing the rustiness and spinning on the very tips of her toes, reaching towards the stars painted on the ceiling and out towards the audience.

She began to move faster and faster as the music grew to a crescendo, twisting and bending against an invisible force and he could feel himself gravitating towards her, pulled in by the beauty of the story she was telling, and he felt tears coming to his eyes for the first time in years as the music cut off and she desperately strained towards him, her blue eyes meeting his, before her legs buckled and she fell to the floor, lifeless and unmoving.

There was silence for interminable seconds, and then the cheers started, louder than even for him as she rose gracefully to her feet and bowed her head in a curtsey. The little princess was crying openly, and moved from her seat to embrace the toy dancer, a dark head and chestnut pressed together.

He choked back his emotions, and swallowed his wine down. Pain tore through his insides, and he began to cough. Out. Now. Air.

He ducked under the high table, disappeared by a side door out into the night, blood bubbling over his lips with every breath.

* * *

When the initial uproar died down, and the harem girls moved in to take the floor, hips swaying provocatively as the young bride drew Zítra aside. "You were beautiful," the girl smiled sadly.

"Thank you, Lady," Zítra ducked her head, more of her hair escaping from the carefully upswept pile upon her head.

The princess seemed about to say something else, but the imperious voice of the Shah interrupted them, calling from his throne in the centre of the high table. "Afsaneh! Bring the dancer here!" The princess paled, and made a gesture with her hand.

"Come," she said softly.

Fear began to tug at Zítra as she made the required obeisance before the Shah. She could feel his eyes running up and down her body, and her heart pounding beneath the corset. Where was the magician when she needed him? In fact, she hadn't seen him since the end of her performance, when she could feel his amber eyes boring into her, staring at her with something that could have been desire.

"Back to your husband, little sister," the Shah commanded, raising Zítra with a finger beneath her chin. The princess curtsied again, and disappeared, leaving Zítra and the Shah alone upon the dais.

In a rustle of silk and jewels, the Shah stood, gripping Zítra's wrist tightly. His breath smelt of wine as he leant to whisper in her ear. "I have something to show you, little dancer."

Nodding dumbly with fear coursing through her veins, she allowed the Shah to lead her behind the great table, his fingers digging in tightly to her tender skin as he pushed open a door to a darkened antechamber, shutting it behind them so that they were plunged into blackness.

"It's a good thing your magician isn't here," the Shah's arms encircled her waist, and she almost cried out, but shut her mouth at the last second. This man was the law here, and if she defied him nothing but a slow, painful death would await her. "He is very…possessive of you, little dancer..."

The man's lips began to nuzzle against her neck, pulling the crown of rosebuds askew as he pushed her up against the wall, pressing his body heavily against hers. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and a feeling of shame lodged in her stomach. "Please…" she whispered. "Please, sir, don't do this…don't…don't…"

He ignored her, his clammy palm sliding over her chest and his breathing coming faster with desire. She could feel something hard pressing into her stomach and she sobbed and pleaded to no avail. He pushed aside the tutu, forcing her legs apart. "I've been wanting this for so long," he groaned, and she cried out, shoulders shaking and eyes slamming shut. This was not happening, not happening, it was a dream, a horrible dream and the magician was going to burst in the kill her attacker and…

He finished with her, and her knees buckled beneath her, sinking to the floor like the broken dancer she emulated not an hour ago, the tulle skirts sticking out at an angle. "You're a good girl," the Shah said, his breathing slowing. "My good girl."

"I'm not yours," she sobbed. "I'm not. I belong to the magician, not to you. Never to you."

The door slammed shut, and she curled into a ball, pain burning between her legs and in her chest. "Why?" she whispered brokenly. "Why? Why me? I've been so stupid, and now he won't want me anymore and I'll have to find someone else who can make me a human girl for the rest of my days…oh please, no, please let him keep me…I'll grovel and beg and please…please…"

The door opened a crack, and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself, burying her head into her knees. "Little one? Zítra Flor?"

"Who…who is it?" she choked out, her voice muffled by the fabric of her costume.

"Darius, Nadir Khan's servant," there was the sound of someone falling to their knees beside her, and a gentle hand touching her back. "What happened, little one?"

"The…the Shah…he…he made me come in here and…" she wept harder, clenching her hands into fists on the cold stone floor. "The magician won't want me anymore…I'm dirty and shamed and broken and…"

"We'll see what he has to say," the servant said quietly. "Come, child, do not weep. The magician is a good man at heart."

He gathered the weeping girl into his arms, and carried her back through the palace, letting himself into the apartment to the sound of awful retching.

He deposited her on a sofa, laid a blanket around her shoulders which she clutched to herself tightly, tears making black streaks in her white make-up. The door to the bathroom opened, and the Persian appeared, sweat staining his brow.

"What happened?" he looked from his servant to the crying girl with a horrified expression on his face.

"The Shah happened," Darius replied, his normal respectful demeanour lost to anger. "She's a child, master, a little girl, and he took her against the wall of an antechamber. She says that the magician will not want her anymore."

"Erik will not have need for anyone soon," the Persian said grimly. "He has been poisoned, and now wishes to travel to Ashraf, to give the final plans to his master mason."

Zítra's head shot up. "Poisoned?" she croaked. "Where is he?"

When the Persian did not answer, she stumbled to her feet. "_Where is he_?"

"The bathroom," the older man gave in, watching as she tripped over her shoe-ribbons in her haste to get into the bathroom. The door shut behind her, and the Persian sank to the place where she'd been sitting.

"Order the carriage, Darius," he said slowly. "If it's the one thing I do for him, it might as well be to honour his dying wish."

* * *

The bathroom door shut behind her, and all she could do was stare in horror. Her magician, the man who'd seemed all but invulnerable was hunched over the luxurious marble bathtub, the mask discarded by his side and bile streaked with blood splattering from his twisted lips.

"Go away, Daroga," he coughed.

"It's me," Zítra crossed the room, knelt beside him, her legs trembling.

"Zítra Flor, where have you been?" Even in this awful state, he managed to sound reproving, before another surge of stomach bile made an appearance. She rubbed circles awkwardly on his back, feeling the shape of his ribs beneath his stained dress-shirt.

"I…I…" she couldn't bring herself to tell him what had happened to her, knowing how he would react. "The little princess wanted to talk to me," she lied. "What caused this?"

"The wine," he gasped, his whole body shaking violently. "Don't know what was in it. Must…must get to Ashraf."

"The Persian's ordering the carriage." Keeping the blanket held tightly in one hand, she unfolded a towel from a rail on the wall, laying it over his shoulders. "I'll get a bowl."

The door opened and the Persian appeared, a bowl in his hands. "You read my mind," Zítra grimaced at him. "We need to get more blankets, and get him into the carriage as quickly as possible."

And so, as the bells of the great clock-tower were tolling midnight, a carriage rolled out of the city gates, a dying man cradled in the arms of the clockwork dancer, her key dangling from her neck as she leaned forward to brush a kiss against his delirious brow.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N **Thank you for the follows and favourites and my reviewer, Fairiel - it means a lot to me. Happy New Year, everyone, bring on 2014! (Anything recognisable is adapted from the Kay Novel).

* * *

**Part III**

**Ashraf, 1852**

On the third night in the house in Ashraf, he slipped into a coma, lying still and silent on the bed, his face covered once again by the mask. Zítra sat beside him, her fingers woven through his and that blanket still wrapped tightly around her body, her mind numb from tiredness.

"Will he wake up?" the door opened, and the little boy, the Persian's son, was sitting there in his wheelchair, pushed by his tired father.

"I don't know, Reza," Zítra whispered, the tear tracks shining golden on her smooth cheeks. "I hope and pray for him, but I don't know."

The little boy's thin fingers searched tremblingly for the masked man's wrist, and Zítra took his frail hand, guided it to touch the magician's arm. Blind eyes fixed on the magician's covered face, the child forcing the slack muscles of his mouth to form slurring words.

"I want you to wake up, Erik," he said. "My music man's broken and no-one else knows how to mend it."

At his words, Zítra began to cry.

* * *

On the fourth night, she curled up at his cold side, draping his lifeless arm over her body. "You wanted to know where I'd been," she told him, listening to the faint beat of his heart in his chest. "I wasn't talking to the little princess. The Shah…he…he took advantage of your absence. Forced himself on me. I'm so ashamed, _Pan, _that I didn't stop him, that I didn't scream, but he was stronger than me and I couldn't move…" her shoulders shook with sobs. "And I just wanted you to know that…that it wasn't the way I'd imagine my first time doing _that _to be…and I'd wanted it to be you, but now you're not going to wake up, and I'll never be able to kiss you and tell you that I'm here, and that I care for you so much, my poor, beautiful, broken magician…"

* * *

On the fifth night, she was bathing his forehead when his eyes fluttered open. "Why didn't you tell me Reza's music-man was broken?" he murmured with quiet clarity.

Zítra burst into tears, embracing him tightly. "Oh, _Pan, _you're alive! Awake! I've been so worried, so terribly worried and thinking you would die you awful man! Don't ever do anything like that ever again."

"I don't think anyone's ever worried about me before," he rasped. "It's quite the novel feeling."

His arms very cautiously wrapped around her back, trembling and tentative as she cried.

The Persian watched from the doorway as the two embraced, smiling to himself. Zítra might be young in years, but she was certainly suited to his moody, unpredictable, violently wonderful friend. He'd watched her mature from a lively, innocent girl to a woman in a matter of days, and whilst some did not cope with such a change, Zítra had flowered with it.

She raised her head and beamed at him, gesturing for him to come in. "And look, here's the Persian," she said cheerfully. "Look, I'll get you a glass of water, and you two men can talk. I know you have a lot to say to each other."

* * *

Days passed and the summer approached with blazing sun and flowers blooming in the garden. The magician spent his time at the palace worksite and at the bedside of little Reza, and Zítra danced on the grass, body swaying to the sound of the birdsong. It was odd, to miss a man who lived in the same house, but she missed the way things used to be, the arguments and the needling each other unnecessarily. Since he recovered, cold, icy walls had been slammed up and he no longer smiled faintly when he saw her, or made any attempt to speak with her anymore.

It was late one evening, and she could hear the Persian and the magician's voices conversing in the room, the older man's voice breaking on a sob. She stood in the doorway as the magician emptied a glass vial into a clay cup of sherbet, took it in his elegant, long-fingered hand.

"This is no longer your burden," he said gently to the Persian. "Wait for me here."

He crossed the room and she waited in the doorway, her body frozen as the clock ticked away. Five minutes passed, and then he was back, the limp body of Reza cradled in his arms. He laid the boy in his father's lap, and stepped back, head bowed.

Her hands came up to stifle her gasp, and when his head jerked up, his amber eyes meeting hers, she turned and began to run blindly through the house, throwing herself on her bed. He killed the little boy. He killed a child, no more than nine or ten years old. Had he no pity?

The door creaked open after a while, and there were footsteps crossing the room, a weight on the end of her bed. "Go away," she said fiercely. "I don't wish to speak to you."

"Zítra." His beautiful voice echoed in the air between them, and she buried her face in her pillow.

"Go away," she snapped.

"It was quick," he told her quietly. "If I hadn't have done it, he would have suffered terribly for weeks and months, and how fair would that have been to him?"

"The Persian…"

"Nadir has known for some time now, that the option was there if he wished it to be," he paused. "It was a kindness, Zítra. It is the one thing I do not feel guilty for."

She was silent for several seconds, and he sighed.

"What do you feel guilty for, if not for killing a little boy?" she asked after a time.

Shutters went down over his eyes. "I will not speak of it to you."

"_Pan…_"

He stood. "I will see you in the morning."

* * *

But in the morning, he was gone. Zítra found the Persian sitting and staring into space, his hands twisting a piece of string over and over again. "Where is the magician?" she asked, her voice croaky.

"Back to court," he said, staring straight through her. "I suppose I shall have to return, too."

Zítra shuddered. "I'm coming with you."

"That would not be a good idea," the Persian blinked. "The Shah…"

"I'm not frightened of the Shah anymore. I have my magician," she lied. She was still frightened of the Shah, of the lustful gleam in his eyes and her utter powerlessness to resist him.

"He is not yours, Zítra," the Persian chided gently. "Though to say the truth, he cares for you more than I think he's cared for anyone."

Zítra twisted her key between her fingers. "I'm still coming to court."

The Persian gave up all attempts to dissuade her, returning his eyes to the place where his son was buried. "If you wish."

* * *

Upon arriving at the court in the warmth of the late afternoon, the Persian went straight for an audience with the Shah. Zítra found the magician in their apartment, sitting on the divan with his head in his hands. "What's happened?" she asked.

"Nothing," he snapped. She sat down beside him, laid a hand on his arm. He flinched.

"Tell me," she pressed, tucking her legs up underneath her. "Please. You can't keep bottling all the bad things up inside you."

"No," he glared at her. "Don't you understand, you insolent child? No means no."

"I'll get it out of one of the servants," she threatened.

"You have no money to bribe them with," he growled. "Drop it, Zítra Flor."

Furious at the walls that had gone up around him since his recovery, she stood, tossing her hair to one side. "I'll break my key if you don't tell me," she said spitefully. "Then when it's my birthday, I'll turn into a doll and I'll stay as a doll. You'll never see me again."

The visible side of his face paled, and he let out a snarl. "Damn you, stupid girl."

"Tell me," her hands found the key, bending it between her fingers.

"They brought a harem-girl to me," he pushed the key out her hands, and it fell against her chest. "She refused, when I told her that she'd be free and provided for life if she came willingly. The khanum had her killed. She was only a year older than you, and her only crime was being terrified of me. Everyone is terrified of me. No-one looks at me and thinks I'm normal. That's all I ever want sometimes. To be normal."

"I'm not terrified of you," Zítra said quietly as he turned to face the balcony window, pacing up and down in front of it, his shoulders set in a tense line. Jealousy dampened down by his anger boiled in places inside her that she didn't even know existed.

"Look upon my face and tell me that," he snapped.

"I've seen your face," she fisted her hands in the green silk of her dress.

He tore off the mask, turning to face her, amber eyes blazing out of a corpse-like face, twisted lips and missing nose. Zítra didn't even flinch.

"I'm not frightened of you," she repeated. "Well, sometimes when you scream and shout, but otherwise, no. You've been nothing but good to me."

"Fuck," he swore, turning away and burying his face in his hands. "You don't know what you do to me, Zítra Flor."

She crossed the room, wrapped her arms tightly around his thin body. "_Pan…_"

"My name is Erik."

"I know," she said. "Erik. I know. I've seen the way you look at me and…"

"Doesn't that make me the same as the Shah – a lecherous man leering after a young girl? I heard what you said that night." His voice sounded broken, a man reaching for something he could never have.

"You're not the same as him. You never could be. He's bad, you're good. He's greedy, you're not. And he wants what he can't have, you want what's already in your hands."

He prises her arms from around his waist, turns to face her, gripping her wrists tightly. "You mean it?"

"Yes," she went up on her tiptoes, her face inches from his. There was a moment of indecision, and then he groaned, wrapping his arms around her body, and kissed her fiercely. Her lips parted eagerly beneath the mass of twisted flesh he called a mouth, her delicate fingers clawing through his thinning hair. Her body arched under his exploring hands as they slid down her back, her stomach, the inside of her thighs, and all she could think was how right this felt, to be held in the arms of her magician.

He jerked away suddenly, breathing heavily, a terrified look in his amber eyes. "I can't do this. You're too young," he shook his head. "Still a child."

She gripped his shoulders tightly, her cheeks flushed and her hair falling about her face in waves of chestnut. "I'm old enough to make my own choices, Erik."

She pushed the silk sleeves of her dress off her shoulders, shivering at the cool, evening scented air from the balcony. He swallowed, his arm tightening around her waist.

"I've never done this before," and for a second he was not arrogant, or scornful, or aloof, he was just frightened, and she'd never felt as old as she did in that moment.

She kissed the hollow of his throat, the skin of his deformed cheek. "Don't be frightened. It's only me."

With a groan, he pulled her face back to his, kissing her like she was the only thing keeping him from drowning, pulling the skirt of her dress away from her legs, undoing the clasps at the back with trembling fingers.

She unbuttoned his shirt, kissed the scars left by things melting into history, leaving kisses that burned against his skin. He gathered her into his arms, his little clockwork dancer, carried her into his bedroom, and laid her down on the bed, kneeling over her. She reached up to stroke her fingers along the hole where his nose should be, wrapping her arms around him, and pulling him down on top of her, their bodies becoming one in the dying light of a painted sunset.

* * *

In the morning, when they did not answer the Persian's knocks, he walked in to find clothes scattered by the window, and the sound of laughter coming from the bedroom. Sighing, and shaking his head, he settled on the divan to wait for them to emerge.

* * *

She trailed her thumb along his scars, her skin cream against the red-velvet covers. "I want to know trivial things about you," he said, winding her chestnut hair around his long, slender fingers.

"There aren't many trivial things to know," she sighed. "I have a weakness for dance-shoes, and I favour the night hours to the day."

"You are like me, then," he might have smiled. "The night is infinitely more beautiful than daytime. Any more light than that given off by a candle is garish."

"When the nightingale sings, everything stops to listen," she paused. "I used to dance to the sound of the nightingale, until the Enchanter made me come inside, and sleep. He never really understood me."

"My mother didn't understand me, either," he found himself confessing. "She was frightened of me. Like everyone. Not like you."

"There was a room in the Enchanter's House," she smiled. "It was where all the toys that didn't work out went. The ones with funny paint-jobs, or creepy smiles, who never got a human self. He called it his room of misfit toys. And I guess, to humanity, that's what we are. Misfit toys."

"You are wise," he said.

"You are a genius," she brushed his hair away from his face.

"The Daroga is waiting outside. He's not pleased with us," Erik told her.

"Let him be angry," she tossed her head. "I don't care, and I know you don't."

* * *

"What are you thinking?" the Persian stands, his green eyes blazing with an uncharacteristic anger as the two appear in the bedroom door, Erik's too-large robe slung over Zítra's shoulders, trailing on the floor like a ceremonial robe.

The magician adjusts his shirt, giving a carelessly fluid shrug. "We weren't _thinking _of anything, Daroga."

"You fools," the Persian hisses, raking a hand through his hair. "I thought you said…"

"What I said then does not matter now," the magician settles himself in the space on the divan left by the Persian, Zítra pacing over to sink into an armchair, her arms wrapped around her small waist and her hair cascading over the deep red of the robe. "Would you care to elaborate why you think we are fools?"

"You cannot do things like this. The khanum…"

"May be interested in my bedroom activities, but there's nothing she can do about it. Or will she know about it."

"Allah, you can be so stupid! She has spies everywhere! She'll have one amongst your servants. _I _have one amongst your servants."

The magician raises an eyebrow at this revelation. "There were no servants in the apartment last night and there is nothing you, nor the khanum, can do to stop affairs that are entirely my business. Now leave, before I grow angry with you."

"If you won't listen to reason, you'll listen to the sound of the sword whistling above your head," the Persian mutters mutinously, his robes swirling around his feet as he walks towards the door. "But for Allah's sake, be circumspect about how you conductyour _affairs_ in future."

"I don't need advice from you," the magician's parting shot rings over the Persian's shoulder, and the door slams behind him. He sighs, gets to his feet.

"Where are you going?" Zítra asks, unfolding herself from her chair.

"I have an audience with the khanum this morning," he answers, raking a hand through his hair. "Then, I'm afraid, little dancer that I have to go back to the palace site. I will be back by tomorrow night, and you will be perfectly safe."

"Do make amends with the Daroga," she reaches out and grips his arm. "And, Erik, I've…"

"Hush," he said, one hand touching her face for the briefest of caresses. "I will see you soon."

She was left alone in the sitting room, cradled in the smell of his robe as she heard his footsteps retreating away down the corridor outside.

* * *

It was late when he returned. Zítra had been pacing, wearing the pattern of her footsteps into the rug, his robe swishing from her shoulders in a swathe of black silk. One of the Shah's cats was curled contentedly on the couch, purring, and for a moment the girl envied it its confidence and peacefulness.

The grandfather clock struck midnight as the door opened and he entered, the Persian in tow. The two were arguing, but there was a bantering air to the way they spoke, the hostility of their past exchange dissolved into thin air.

The magician glanced at her and there was a look in his amber eyes that made heat burn in her stomach and between her thighs. "You may leave, Daroga," he said, and the Persian looked between the two of them, shaking his head.

"I give up," he muttered, and the visible part of the magician's mouth twisted up in a sardonic smile.

"As you should, when the matter is none of your business," he turned away, and the Persian quietly left the room, shutting the door behind him. She padded over to him, her hair cascading loose about her shoulders, sliding the silken robe down to let it puddle at her feet.

"I missed you," she said, her hands reaching up to pull away his mask, dropping it to the floor with the robe.

"I shall have to take you with me when I go to the palace again," he takes her in his arms, and she sighs as his lips graze hers, his elegant, long fingers spread across the white linen covering her back.

Unbeknownst to them, a servant stood hidden in the shadow of the kitchen door, a broom in her hands and her green eyes narrowed, watching as clothes fell to the floor like petals, as her master took the girl in his arms, kissing her with his horribly deformed lips. The woman shuddered in disgust as his hands moved under the skirt of her nightgown, the girl's head falling back as she cried out, her hands clinging to his shoulders.

The khanum would pay well for such information.

* * *

The days moved like the pages of a book, turned by idle hands. They spent hours in each other's arms, memorising the lines of each other's bodies, talking and laughing and making love when the stars shined their cold light through the windowpanes. Whenever he looked back on that time, the magician would always call it the halcyon days of his life, when he came home to Zítra's smile and her ready embrace. He wondered whether falling in love was like this, the utter contentment whenever he was around her, and the desperate longing whenever they were apart.

Several months passed, and it was the height of summer once again. He returned from the almost-completed palace of Mazanderan, hot and irritable and ready to sleep with the weight of Zítra's head resting contentedly against his chest.

Letting himself into the apartment, he looked around, hanging up his cloak and hat. "Zítra?" he called.

No reply. Maybe Nadir had taken her to the food-market in the centre of Tehran. She had mentioned it. Disappointed, he sank down upon the divan, pulling a piece of paper towards him and absently beginning to draw. Zítra's face took shape beneath his pencil, the curve of her cheekbones and the sweep of her eyelashes, the straight lines of her nose and the stubbornness of her jaw.

Anyone else would have thought that idle sketch was a masterpiece, but after looking at it for a few seconds all he could think was how it did not capture the hopeful blue of her eyes that was like the top layer of a sunset.

He sat there for a long time, staring into space, and it was there that he was when the nervous summons came from a slave of the khanum, a boy with eyes flickering everywhere except on the magician's face.

"The Majesty of the Sun wishes you to attend upon her," he trembled, and the magician, jerked out of his peaceful trance, glared awfully at the messenger.

"She told me you must come with utmost haste," the boy ventured, and the magician growled, pushing past the terrified child, and flinging on his hat and cloak.

It did not take long to reach the harem, where eunuchs bowed him into a courtyard with glass-paste mosaics glinting in the floor and flowers spilling over balconies in waterfalls of colour. The khanum waited at one end, surrounded by her ladies, and at the expression on her face, dread snaked cold tendrils around his heart, like ivy around a tree, slow, inexorable, unescapable.

"Ah, Erik, there you are," she approached him, the colours of the ladies clothes parting like the Red Sea. "I have a gift for you."

He stayed silent. Was she trying to torture him? Whatever it was, it wouldn't work.

Something was clasped in her hands. A hint of gold sparkled through her fingers. She smiled, cruel, like a cat toying with an unfortunate mouse. "Don't you want to know what it is?" she asked languorously.

He didn't reply.

"I said, don't you want to know what it is?"

"If it pleases you, Madame," the feeling in his chest was getting tighter, knots were twisting in his stomach like he'd swallowed a writhing snake.

There was another tantalising flash of gold.

Then the key dropped into his hands.

Twisted, broken.

Rage. Pain. Fear. Horror.

He looked up at the delighted khanum.

"Where is she?"

"I do not know what you are talking about." she turned away, the rings on her fingers glinting like eyes.

"Where is she?" his voice was awful in the stillness.

"She, oh, you mean your little toy? It is here, Erik, right here."

The skirts of the ladies swirled, and then there she was, held by two eunuchs, bound, bruised, broken. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and he could see the wood slowly creeping up the tips of her fingers.

"Zítra," his voice was hoarse, disbelieving.

She whimpered, her knees buckling, and one of the eunuchs shook her.

The man's cry of pain echoed through the hall a second later, and then Zítra was in the magician's arms, her head lolling to one side, and her eyelids flickering shut. She was cold and blood was sticky on his hands as he pushed past the khanum, out of the harem, along deserted corridors lit by glowing lamps, into the apartment, slamming the door.

He laid her on their bed, the pain in his chest like a river in full flood. "Erik," she murmured, tossing her head to one side as he undid the ropes with trembling fingers. "Erik, where are you?"

"I'm here, Zítra. I'm here," the breath hitched in his throat as blood began to spread across the sheets. "It's alright, it's going to be alright."

"No, it's not," she opened those blue eyes that had always been able to see right through his rage and his pain. "I'm dying."

Those words tore at him with sharp claws, and he choked back sobs. "You're not dying. You're not, look, I'm going to get bandages and…"

"It's too late. Too late," she broke off, coughing, and held out her arms, beseeching. "Hold me. Please."

"You can't die, you can't," he lay beside her, taking her into his arms as she pulled off his mask, her hands resting weakly against his chest. "I won't let you."

"You have to let me go," her eyes were infinite pools in the gathering darkness.

"No," came his simple answer. "No. I am never letting you go."

* * *

She took hours to die, choking and bleeding away her life as fragile limbs slowly turned to wood. He held her in his arms, her tears falling on his cheeks as he sang to her, watched her, pleaded with her. _She can't die. She can't_.

It was almost midnight, and the starlight shone on her painted cheeks, little breaths fluttering past his face and a fading heartbeat echoing in the air around them. _She is not dying. _

It was midnight and the chimes fell from the grandfather clock, bong, bong, bong. When it was quiet again there was only one heart beating.

He screamed. When he shook her, her wooden eyelids opened and flat blue eyes stared up at him reproachfully.

On her back, the keyhole had disappeared. He sobbed and cursed raggedly, and when the dawn came, the Persian found him lying still and silent with a wooden doll clutched to his chest, and blood staining the sheets in the shape of wings.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N **Thank you for sticking with me through this - I hope you enjoy the last part.

**Part Four**

**1881, Paris**

Years had passed. Leaving Persia under the shadow of the executioner's sword, he had travelled to starlit, snow-shrouded Prague with the lifeless weight of the clockwork doll held before him on his horse, had found the tall, rambling terrace of the Enchanter of which Zítra had told him.

He had hammered on the door until his fists bled and no-one answered, though there was a fluttering at the curtains and small, painted faces pressed up against the windowpanes. He had returned, for days on end, wearing out his voice and his hands, until on the ninth day, the door cracked open to reveal a bespectacled, grey-haired man with an air of faint irritation hanging about him like a cloak.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he had snapped peevishly.

The magician had gently lifted the doll into the Enchanter's arms, had waited with his head tilted to one side and anger and hopefulness clouding his amber eyes. The Enchanter had just snorted, and dropped the doll back at the magician's feet with an echoing, empty thud. "No, I can't fix her. The stupid girl shouldn't have got herself killed in the first place."

"You have to do something," the magician had snarled, his hands itching to lock around the man's throat. The Enchanter just turned away with a grunt.

"This," a dismissive wave of a wrinkled hand, "Is not my problem."

In the end, it had been the magician's vengeful hands which had hastened the death of the Enchanter. A forgotten thrill had trembled through the magician as the old man had jerked on the end of his lasso, like a silvery fish pulled from the waters of a tinkling country stream. The magician had left him glassy-eyed and staring, tangled in the bed sheets, with the vague feeling that Zítra might have been ashamed of him.

* * *

And after that, after years of meaningless contract work in the ancient city of Paris and all the trials and tribulations of the building of the Opera House and the utter hassle of trying to be an effective ghost, he had finally found a purpose again, found a purpose singing softly to herself in the voice of an angel as she brushed her hair, tears trembling on her ivory cheeks.

"Papa," she'd been saying. "Papa, please. You promised me you'd send him. Why haven't you sent him Papa? Why haven't you sent me my Angel of Music?"

He hadn't known what possessed him, but, standing behind her mirror, utterly entranced, he had opened his mouth and began to sing a soft lullaby, and to this day, he had never forgotten the look of utter, incredulous joy spreading across her face.

Now, that purpose was here with him, in his little house by the underground lake, the structure of the theatre towering like a great mausoleum above them. He thought he loved her, this beautiful girl who could make angels weep for shame, and kept her here to keep her safe from the outside world, from a childhood friend with whom she fancied herself in love. But in truth, his capacity to love had died with his clockwork dancer at the end of the halcyon days.

One night, the fire was flickering merrily in the grate and morphine was trickling through his veins as a cocoon of music filled the still, cold air.

"Who is this?" Christine's voice pierced the haze of music that surrounded him, and his fingers paused on the ivory and ebony keys of his grand piano, his cat's comforting warmth curled upon his lap. He slowly turned to look at her standing in the doorway, at the blue eyes that looked so similar to those of the girl in the portrait.

"Who is that?" he echoed her question, feel a hitch of pain in his chest, pain that had been buried for twenty-nine years in a heart as hard and cold as a stone. "That is a long story, my dear."

"Can I hear it?" she ventured further into the room towards him, her knuckles white around the frame and fear in her eyes, as though he would shout and swear, like he so often did when she tried to brush the cobwebs from his past.

His gaze turned back to the manuscript on the piano, and he sighed. There was no reason to deny her this, to tell her the story of how his life was turned upside down in the space of a mere three years. "Sit down, then," he said, hearing, rather than seeing the divan creak under the weight of her slender body and the blue robe tossed carelessly around her slim shoulders.

The cat, Ayesha, protested with a vaguely annoyed chirrup as he lifted her off his lap, crossing the room to stoke up the fire. It was suddenly cold. "I met her before you were even born, Christine," he started softly. "She was a dancer, had a natural, innate talent, much like your friend, Meg. I was at a fair in Russia, and she hung around outside my tent like a little sparrow, flat-out refusing to leave me alone. She was always stubborn."

"What was her name?" Christine's voice was soft, and he sighed, settling into his armchair that sank comfortably under his weight.

"Zítra," he said, that dull ache at the mention of her increasing with every word that spilt over her lips. "It means 'tomorrow' in Czech."

"She was beautiful," Christine whispered, tracing the line of the battered white tutu with the tip of one finger. "What happened to her?"

"She died," he snapped, and she flinched a little.

"I'm sorry," she trembled under his furious glare, anger and pain welling like lava from the crater of a volcano, fiery and red and burning.

He stood, abruptly, turning towards the mantelpiece and lifting a small box from the shelf hewn from stone. "Here," he said shortly, depositing it into Christine's lap, looming over her like a great black crow.

She opened the lid cautiously, and music began to play, music that tugged at her soul and wanted to give her feet wings, if only she could fly.

Inside, there was a motley collection of objects, a piece of dirtied, torn lace; several wads of folded paper that turned out to be drawings of the same girl as in the portrait, of Zítra. The most haunting of these was a picture of a bed, rumpled sheets with a black-cloaked figure with a hidden face, holding a lifeless body in his arms. She felt tears spring to her eyes as she moved these aside, revealing a tattered crown of rosebuds, a dirty pair of pointe shoes, and beneath it all, a key of what once must have been gold filigree twisted and snapped beyond recognition and strung on a golden chain.

The magician was watching her, wariness concealed by the white mask across his face. "They were hers?" she asked softly, reaching out to touch his thin, gloved hand.

He nodded, and for the first time ever she saw tears swimming in his eyes, tears of a love lost long ago.

A question teetered on the tip of her tongue, falling like a stone into the space between them. "Did you love her?"

Another nod, and Christine let out a shaky breath. "She was a lucky girl, then, to be loved by you."

* * *

It was simple, in the end, to let Christine go, to release her from her gilded cage with the young Vicomte de Chagny with an envelope in her hands and a promise that, whilst she might forget him, to never forget the story inside that fold of paper. She wept, and kissed his forehead when he released the young man from the torture chamber in the corner of his home, and when all was said and done, he retired to the coffin in his bedroom, lay down with the portrait of Zítra held in his embrace.

He closed his eyes, emptiness where his heart should have been, and dreamed of the day Zítra danced at the feast, dreamed of the day when she told him she loved him, and when the time eventually came, she was there, behind his eyelids with one hand outstretched and that smile stretching the corners of her cheeks wide.

"What took you so long?" her laugh was like bells, just as he remembered.

He felt his heart beating strongly in his chest as she pulled him forward, leaning up on her tiptoes and pressing a butterfly kiss to his scarred cheek.

Their fingers laced together, and she looked up at him, her lashes throwing shadows on her face and her eyes sparkling.

"Are you scared?"

"No, never," he said.

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying."

"You are. You are scared."

"You are impossible."

"You're scared! The great Phantom of the Opera is frightened!"

"Zítra Flor!"

"Erik Destler!"

She laughed again and squeezed his hand. "There's nothing to be scared of. Are you ready?"

He took a deep breath. The air was cold, clean, and stars shone above them.

"Yes."

* * *

**The End**


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